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Last friday, a complex multi-stage contract I’ve been working on for the past 6 months unexpectedly fell through. While I was starting to wonder if I was being stringed along at a short-term stage of the contract, having all stages fall through together was quite a shock. Not only because this pretty much relocates my […]

Even though the IRC protocol is several decades old, it’s still actively used and an invaluable resource to get support through. While OSS projects are better represented, there are lots of channels about closed source technologies and companies as well. This post isn’t intended to give you a primer on IRC, instead I’ll show you a couple of steps on how to get IRC to work for you.

Ed Finkler makes two points in his post “We’re the Stupid Ones: Facebook, Google and Our Failure as Developers”. 1: Google is making a mistake in indexing. It doesn’t select the most relevant page as the first result, but a somewhat relevant page, which confuses users. 2: developers should create UI’s which behaves the way the user naturally expects. I’d like to give my opinion on both.

In an office, the workers open their thin clients and netbooks to start the day. A network connection is provided at every corner, and there is wireless too, so you can work everywhere you want. All applications run on some big systems, and they just connect to it through their browsers. Sound like the future? Think again: it’s the past.

I don’t like pyramid schemes, but if both Matthew Weier O’Phinney and Ivo Jansch are participating, who am I to stop the trail? So here’s my list of seven(ish!) things you may or may not know about me (likely the latter), after receiving a tag from Ivo Jansch.

Remi’s 2¢

Ed Finkler makes two points in his post “We’re the Stupid Ones: Facebook, Google and Our Failure as Developers”. 1: Google is making a mistake in indexing. It doesn’t select the most relevant page as the first result, but a somewhat relevant page, which confuses users. 2: developers should create UI’s which behaves the way the user naturally expects. I’d like to give my opinion on both.

365,25 days and 500 tweets ago, I registered for a Twitter account. I was already one of the last people in IT to do so, but I did beat Oprah to it. People who don’t use Twitter don’t get it. People who use it, often don’t get it either. So the big question is: would I have joined Twitter a year ago, if I knew what I know now?

In an office, the workers open their thin clients and netbooks to start the day. A network connection is provided at every corner, and there is wireless too, so you can work everywhere you want. All applications run on some big systems, and they just connect to it through their browsers. Sound like the future? Think again: it’s the past.

Recent news tells the world how little the average kid in a US high school actually knows about the country. The results in itself are a major disgrace; especially for a country that emphasizes that it is the best country in the world. Even I, non-American, European, had eight of the questions correct. However, if this was not bad enough, it actually gets worse!

In an attempt to get negative attention off of Windows Vista, Microsoft starts a marketing campaign called ‘The Mojave Experiment’. In this experiment, users who don’t want to upgrade to Windows Vista are shown a new Windows version, and they are recorded with a hidden camera while being asked about their feelings about Windows Vista, while they see a demonstration of the ‘new’ Windows.

Tutorials

Even though the IRC protocol is several decades old, it’s still actively used and an invaluable resource to get support through. While OSS projects are better represented, there are lots of channels about closed source technologies and companies as well. This post isn’t intended to give you a primer on IRC, instead I’ll show you a couple of steps on how to get IRC to work for you.

For my job, I need to fill out a form monthly. Till a short while ago, I opened Microsoft Publisher for this, filled out the fields, saved, exported as PDF file and finally mailed the form. Given that the contents of the form are fully computable in 99% of the cases, there had to be a way to automate it. With Zend_PDF to the rescue, automating gets easy. Read on to see how.

Sometimes you just need a resultset in CSV (so non-geeks can read it in XLS format). MySQL has several options for that. First and foremost: SELECT (…) INTO OUTFILE. This is probably the most common one, and the easiest to use. However, this does not work if you’re on a remote client, so solution does work if you’re connected remotely?

As a fervent multi-monitor user, I ran into issues with the latest Ubuntu (9.04) in combination with Gnome and Eclipse. When I switched to another application which was (partially) overlapping Eclipse, I could not switch back to Eclipse by clicking the item in the taskbar. Nothing would happen, and if I clicked multiple times, the application would actually get hidden.

For my mail, I use several catch-all accounts, so I can give every service it’s own email address, which proves very useful in creating automatic rules. There is one issue though, you have only one sender account, and some services require that you respond from the original send-to address.

Blog Posts

Now that life has settled down a bit, I can afford to take on a full-time project again and I am very much ready to resume using my passion and knowledge for something productive. I am available immediately and am looking for larger-sized projects/opportunities/positions, at least 3 months, but longer is better. I am not […]

The cause Yesterday, I published a new post announcing my immediate availability. After tweeting that, I got a couple of very flattering retweets (thanks guys! Really!), which lead to the first couple of visitors to my blogpost. All fine and dandy so far, but then something completely unexpected happened. My awesome friend & mentor Cal […]

Last friday, a complex multi-stage contract I’ve been working on for the past 6 months unexpectedly fell through. While I was starting to wonder if I was being stringed along at a short-term stage of the contract, having all stages fall through together was quite a shock. Not only because this pretty much relocates my […]

As most of you probably know, I’ve been working for Zend Technologies since medio 2007 (first DevZone, then eBiz team). But to all things comes an end, and I have signed the “Termination agreement” that Zend handed me, which means I will no longer be working for Zend as of May 2nd, 2011. This also means I’m open for new opportunities. Let the funemployment begin.